Debut, The Big Dance, Year one with a YZ 456G

Baseball has the World Series, NASCAR has the Daytona 500 and Tennis has Wimbledon. ​

For vintage off road riders we have the ISDT Reunion Ride. ​

This is the event where the off road elite (and goobers like me) from allover the world attend to putt around on their old iron. Some attend fortheir last chance to garner coveted AHRMA Cross Country points, some come to see the old Six Days vets and some come to show off restoredbikes. This year&#8217;s ISDTRR was hosted by the Tulsa (Oklahoma) Trail Riders and held at the location of the 1994 ISDE; the Zink Ranch inSand Spring, OK. The 2004/2008 ISDTRR was also held here but boththose years I was on my way to Iraq to play in the sand when the ridewas going on.​

Ok prelude. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>My YZ465 got me through the last 2-day event in Arkansas pretty well butstarting remained a big issue. Since then I had been poking arounddifferent areas trying to find the culprit(s). I narrowed it down to thetiming. The timing was too far advanced making the motor hard to start and when it was running it would be detonate intermittently. I had set thetiming with a timing light to Yamaha&#8217;s spec (ok, ok, maybe I bumped itup just a little) but this time around I decided to use the ear, boot andseat-of-the-pants method to adjust the timing back to where I need it tobe. I also raised the needle to it&#8217;s highest (richest) setting as my plug readings were light tan and the weather forecast called for much coolertemperatures for the ride. After three or four tiny-weenie timingadjustments I got the bike to become a 1-3 kick-starter with no noticeable signs of pinging. All I had was a dirt road to test on so puttinga heavy load on the motor to get it hot was hard to do. Never the less thestarting was much better and the bike had enough power to easily breakthe rear wheel loose in fifth gear. After these adjustments I wentout in the morning three days in a row and started the motor by slowly kicking it through 4-5 times with the kill button pushed, then giving it thebig kick. The motor started in 1-2 kicks every time. Sweet. I dumped theold Preston Petty headlight used on my last race in favor of a more&#8220;Period Correct&#8221; light off my 1980 KTM GS250. The event also requireda taillight so I cheaped out and stuck a little blinkly light forjoggers/bicycles onto the rear fender. Dumb looking but it filled therequirement. To raise the fun factor at this year&#8217;s ISDTRR, my buddiesand I formed team &#8220;Scuderia Veloce&#8221;, (Italian for &#8220;Team Speed&#8221. Thisyear there were over 20 teams competing; ye-haw. A look at the entrylist showed 17 in my class and this turned out to be the largest class inthe event. Cool. This event would be a good benchmark for judging myability on the YZ.​

On to Oklahoma​

Before getting to the Zink Ranch, I made a detour and stopped by GuyCooper&#8217;s place in Stillwater to check out his mini-museum. Guy hadopened the doors that day for folks to see his place. When I went inside,the first person I saw was John Penton. How righteous. John was talkingabout his old race bikes and the virtues of the NSU transmissions. Johncan talk&#8230;a lot. Then I went around the corner and there was JackPenton chatting with Coop. In case you didn&#8217;t know it Guy&#8217;s mom anddad ran Cooper Cycles back in the day and were a Penton/Bultacodealer. ​

Coop has a few older bikes too, sorry about the fuzzy picture.​

This one was a little unique looking:​

A few bicycles also hang out here:​

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On to the Ranch!​

Some of the bikes at this year's ride:​

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Here is a sweet 650 Triumph punched out to a 750ish size. We will seea better picture of this bike in action later.​

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Here is one for all you IT490 fans:​

The impound area filled up quickly:​

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You can't miss Dwight Rudder, with his old school goggles, wax cottonjacket and big smile.​

Time to Ride​

Day 1 ​

As the weatherman promised: temps dropped. Saturday morninggreeted us with a layer of frost covering the bikes. ​

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Fortunately Key Time was 09:00 a.m. and the sun was up and bright. Iwas on minute 22 and started slowly kicking the YZ motor over whenminute 21 took off. Although the YZ would start great when stone cold in50-degree weather, it did not like the 30-degree temps and gotstubborn, requiring about 10-12 kicks to light off. Ugh!​

I finally got the old girl fired off and I was gone in a cloud of 2 stroke smoke:​

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After the start, riders were greeted with a fast, fun winding trail to warmup prior to the first Terrain Test (TT). The trail was classic Zink Ranch,meaning it was great but don&#8217;t stray off the route because there arerocks EVERYWHERE just waiting to kick the front end of your bike outand put you down; hard. Here is an example of the rocks talking to thisCan-Am:​

As the race developed I found that my class nemesis would be a guy onan XR200. Wait a minute pal; did you say XR200? Yes, an XR200. Iknow that might sound silly but in a ride like the Zink Ranch an XR 200is a formable weapon. While bigger bikes have horsepower and speedthe little Hondas have lightweight, great cornering and tractable power.They are also Post Vintage class legal up to around the 2003 modelyear so you can get a pretty good bike with much more fresh/modernpieces to play with. The rider was no slouch either. ​

<o></o>There were test sections where I was just short of wide open in fifth gear(and scared to death) with stuff flying by so quickly I couldn&#8217;t compute it fastenough which resulted in me blowing thru more then one corner.Remember those rocks just off the main trail? I found them more thanonce as I was trying to get the YZ slowed down enough to make a turn.But man, what a rush flying down a 18 inch wide trail in top gear on aopen class bike, you quickly learn to start looking waaaaaay ahead forwhat will be upon you in the next couple of seconds&#8230;including slowerriders. Oh, and let&#8217;s not forget about those cute little Black Jack oaktrees. Most on the route stood three to five foot tall and although small instature, they are tuff as rocks, don&#8217;t like to move and that includes thebranches. Fortunately these trees were sparse on the course. At the endof the day we get one lap on the grass track for time. It was a tight track.Here I'm just trying to make the best of it:​

By the end of Day-1 I was in third place in my class. Considering myscrew-ups in the test sections, I was elated. My team was in 10<SUP>th</SUP> andholding it&#8217;s own.​

Banquet​

An ISDTRR tradition is the Saturday evening banquet. This is whereawards are presented for achievements and lies are told about past,present and future rides. There were about twenty ISDT/E riders presentincluding Tommy McDermott (first American to win ISDT gold), DrewSmith and of course Jack Penton. Jack Penton and Jeff Debell MC'ed this years banquet which was held at the John Zink lodge. ​

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Someone made the mistake of letting me have the mic. Here I amdiscussing the finer elements of how to ride with Guy Cooper. I don'tthink he totally bought in on my techniques. Actually we were just having a little impromptu fun with Coop.​

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Day 2​

Day-2 was a shorten version of Day-1. We had another great ride and some of the tests were the reverse of Day 1. Riders generally improved their scores as they had a feel for how the course worked. The big event for Day 2 is the grass track race, this is where you get to show your stuff or embarrass yourself in front of everyone...including the cameras.​

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Remember that big Triumph? It REALLY motored!​

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Guy Cooper (number 402) rode a vintage class 400 Penton aganist therest of the 6 Day riders and pros, most of which were on modern bikes.Even though Guy dogged the motor off the line and the others were onmodern bikes it didn't help much as Coop did this:​

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Then this:​

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Then Coop rearanged this corner:​

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Two turns later he had the lead which by the end of 4 laps was 20 -30seconds over 2nd place.​

Mommy Make it Stop Hurting!​

<o></o>The grass track was just short of a mile in length and tight with lots ofshort straights and turns. There were a few open areas which included acouple of mini gravity cavities where you would drop in and out of a 15foot deep bowls and a 75 yard sweeping turn that was also part of thestart. Ah yes, the start. The first turn was a 180-degree deal about 50-75yards away from the start line. A two-foot wide tree made sure no onecut the corner. The only thing tighter than the turns was the starting line. Itonly took ten riders to fill the start line bar to bar and I had seventeen inmy race. I lined up right next to my friend on that little XR200; I waskidding him about having a target on his back as he was in first place Iwas in third. Ha, ha. I figured that I might get a good start but it would bethe riders on smaller bikes would have the overall advantage especiallyin the turns. A flag was used for the start and my class (race 7) gotcalled back due to riders jumping the flag. Crazy fools. Everyone had toline back up and after that the flag dude gave up on us because wewere trying to inch up on each other, so he flagged us off. Nothing likegoing from full speed to an almost zero speed first turn with 17 otherriders. Somehow I managed to get thru the first turn in third place:​

By the second corner I was in second place, GREAT! Now all I had toworry about was my lack of riding ability and the 15 bikes behind me.Then I soon realized another issue I needed to worry about; trying tohold down this damn 465 between corners. Most of the corners weretree lined and often only 25 feet apart. As much as I wanted to use thirdgear, many of the corners were way too tight and the straights were waytoo short for third gear. Using third gear would mean having to shift fromsecond gear-to third- and back down to second for almost every corner.So I elected to sit on the gas tank and keep the motor in second gearfor all but the longest track sections of which there were about three. Letme tell you going from no throttle into a corner to coming out WFO insecond gear and then throwing out the anchor into the next corner on a465 will flat wear you out. So here I am on this YZ trying to hang on andguess who is right behind me? Yup, that little XR200. I&#8217;d pull him out of acorner and he would roll right up behind me going into the next one. I justheld the inside line and didn&#8217;t give him enough room to get a wheel in. Acouple of times I went too wide but the YZ had enough boost toovercome my screw-ups. I think people were laughing their a$$es offwatching me trying to hang onto this beast while the little XR wasnipping at my heels. Of course, since the two of us were trying so hardto pass each other the first place rider was gone. Anyway, this scenariowent on for the four-lap race. When we got to the final lap I keptwondering when/where the guy would try to make his move as I keptclosing the door on his lines. Was he just patiently waiting and settingme up for a last lap pass? I'm not sure as I never asked him but on thelast part of the last lap the little XR roared to life and made its move.Going into the last drop off the XR stuck its front wheel up against theYZ. I had two choices: Push back which I felt would have put both of uson the ground going down the drop off or give some ground and moveto the right. I moved to the right but the little XR rider wasn&#8217;t done withme, he just kept pushing me over across the track and into the weeds. Ithought: Man, if he wants it this bad he can have it! And so it ended upwith the XR taking the lead and finishing 1 second ahead of me .Jeeez. When the dust settled and the scores for both days of ridingwere tabulated, I found myself in third place out of seventeen entries inmy class. Good enough for gold metal. Could I have rode better? Sure,but so could everyone else given another chance.​

My kick-starter return died right after I got the bike started for my grasstrack race. Whew. Good thing I didn&#8217;t stall the bike during the race!Upon tear down the following week it showed a broken return spring,kick starter shaft, gear and to top it off; the case. Right now I&#8217;menvisioning building a motor for next year I all ready chatted with EricGorr about it. Eric likes old 2 strokes. Thinking about using an IT bottomend mated with an YZ top end. Heavy crank, wide ratio gearing & EricGorr motor work.​

Drooping pegs need some attention too but the M16s are holding upgreat! Maybe while Eric is working on the motor I should be working onthe elliptical machine :​

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Location for next years ISDTRR will be at Dalton, Massachusetts wherethe 1973 ISDT was held. Should be an epic event. But for now the bigYZ is tucked in, back at home safe and sound.​

Here are a couple of video clips one of our team buds (Justin) took of the event. Justin was riding a 250 Penton which was the bike I rode at last year's event. The first clip is the start of the day and includes, trail and some Terrain Test footage. You can see how fast things got. The second clip is of the Grass Track on Day 2. You get an idea of how tight the Grass Track was. My buddy couldn't even fit his bike in on the front row for the start. Of course you never get the full affect from videos but these will give you a pretty good feel of it.

That's some cool video. I'm surprised at how well that Penton goes, looks like quite the rocket & in those tight tree's it really gobbles up the trail. Some good riding for sure. The grass track stuff just looks elbow to elbow tight. Great stuff
Does your 465 have the 4 speed trans like my ol' 450?

Wow...sounds so fun. What a great read and really fun photos. I'm in VT and have an '82 Can Am 175 Qualifier. I bought it to run in the Vintage XC at MX Rewind, Unadilla but the Mass event sounds like an amazing time and right down the road. If anyone needs old and steady to round out a team I'm all ears.